Whitney

"I didn't know my own strength.
I crashed down and I tumbled,
But I did not crumble.
I was not built to break.
I didn't know my own strength."

So goes the chorus to one of the last Whitney Houston songs I came to love.  I adore glorious comebacks and hers was one I felt was long overdue.  So when her last album came out, I bought the CD, pushed it into the player and listened to the entire thing on loop all the way to Boracay.  I noticed that her voice was raspier than I remembered and the songs were in a much lower register.  Her runs were more predictable and less complicated, her notes less sustained.  The big belter was quite difficult to find.  In its place had settled a more subdued, more vulnerable, more heartfelt Whitney Houston.  And that side of her I embraced willingly even if I admit I missed the booming voice and the notes that could hurl one straight into a brick wall.  Long before her death on Sunday, I had already realized that the Whitney Houston of my childhood was never coming back.

Songs are a means of achieving some semblance of immortality.  Certain memories wind their way through the measures both for the singer and the listener.  As a little girl, Whitney Houston was quite awe-inspiring to me.  She was one of the first pop singers I looked up to - really, really looked up to.  Before her marriage, she was almost squeaky clean and was the daughter of a gospel singer.  "Greatest Love of All" was an ultimate favorite anthem.  My mother used to encourage me to sing just like Whitney - huge voice and solid belting that sent musical notes spiralling to the moon.  So I tried to do just that in my striped red pajamas with the little flowers at age 4, grabbing a microphone and literally screaming myself to the most awkward shade of blue as I struggled with "One Moment in Time" and later "I Wanna Dance with Somebody."  If I could take a look down my throat with tongue depressers, I knew I had scratched myself from the inside with hidden claws from my voice box.

But it was "The Bodyguard" that convinced me that Whitney Houston was simply the most amazing singer of all time.  I was ten and a little too young for the movie but I listened to the soundtrack over and over and over and over again until the cassette tape could have snapped off the plastic rods.  I remember being rendered immobile as I listened to her sing "Run to You" and "I Have Nothing" but it was "I Will Always Love You" that simply won me over.  I still remember watching her on TV as she sat on a chair in the music video, the camera zooming out from her face at the very second that the momentary silence is interrupted when she opens her mouth and sings "And I(aiiiiyeeey)......will always loooooove yooooou."  It was pure exhilaration, nothing less.  Even now, when I listen to that song, the gloriousness of that moment never disappears.  It's an entirely different thing to simply hit the note from singing it.  Her rendition was effortless, uncluttered and an absolute epiphany.  The ease with which she released that powerful voice of hers was almost mesmerizing.  From that time on, I decided I was going to stop trying to be like her because I realized there was no way I was ever going to sing with that precision and power.

Whitney was the benchmark.  Singing contests, lip-synching competitions, beauty pageants...you name it.  People were always trying to sing her songs, attempting to imitate her trademark runs and jawdropping belting.  For instance, take a look at all twelve seasons of American Idol and make a mental note of all the times the contestants decided to slay a Whitney Houston song.  Then try to recall how many of them passed muster.  In the end, the Whitney version was always a gigantic spectre quite too difficult to kill.

There is great unhappiness when I think about how troubled she had become later on until the end of her life.  It was a truth I found very difficult to comprehend - that the immense talent which gave me so much joy was not affording Whitney her share.  She was a poor thing, wasting away before the eyes of her adoring fans.  Her singing mirrored her life.  She was trying to regain what she had before her tumultuous marriage and her drug addiction.  No matter how much I wished for a comeback, I knew it was not going to happen - not when she couldn't take control of her personal life and her wavering voice.

There is great consolation as I listen to more cuts from "I Look to You."  As Whitney was stripped of a great instrument - her formerly reliable voice - she bared her soul even more in her songs as well as her faith.  "I look to you," she sings in the title track. "When all my strength is gone," she adds, "in You I can be strong."  She knew where to look for courage in the midst of her own frailty.  In the wake of her death, it might seem that her source of that strength had failed her.

"I look to You," she sings once more.  "I look to You."

"And when melodies are gone,
In You I hear a song,
I look to You."

Even in death, despite every fall and her tragic end, Whitney Houston is still an inspiration.